the title
Russia is the better side in the war with Ukraine
I understand combating imperialist propaganda but I've seen people who actually want Russia to win the war. The war is a proxy war between two imperial powers, but the USA just happens to be the stronger one. The war in Ukraine is a war between capitalists and the damage it does to the working class should be the focus.
I will be going to sleep immediately after posting this and not looking at my replies
Critical support to anyone fighting against US empire
Calling Russia an imperial power is objectively wrong
Not gonna get into a big debate but just ask yourselves: Do you think you would've called Iraq or Afghanistan an imperial power if they were as strong as Russia is now and able to fight back against the US instead of getting carpet bombed?
Once again, it seems people are equivocating about the use of the terms 'empire' and 'imperialism'. If you're using the Leninist definition, then probably no. But this is not the only meaning that people are using when they are calling Russian imperialist. They mean something different and it has its own valid meaning and legitimately negative connotations. By only using the Leninist definition most 'Empires' in history would not actually be empires at all. It's a semantical debate, not a real one. It's difficult to escape the conclusion that Russian would, if it wanted and could, exert its political power more broadly broadly. The invasion was, yes, triggered and caused to a great degree by American imperialism (in both senses), but that does not imply that Russia is necessarily a progressive historical actor. Other powers can aspire and struggle to an imperial position within an increasingly or potentially multipolar world. Russian's international activity doesn't seem to indicate that they wouldn't take that opportunity. They are a mafioso-capitalist, nationalist state whose discourse is filled with Great-Russian pretensions, and that political ideology doesn't come out of nowhere by accident.
I agree that Russia is not at the same level of fascisation as Ukraine, where its particularly intense, but that doesn't change the fact that Russian has become a deeply chauvinistic, nationalistic, racist, misogynistic place in general. These problems were ofc not solved in the Soviet era, but they have become far, far worse. And you can see this much of their military and their most publically influential thinkers. One of the weirdest experiences honestly when you watch Russian political talk shows is that they are both at a far more intelligent level of conversation of debate than comparable western political discussion, but also how deeply set alot of the reactionary ideology is. Or go on Russian telegram. It will take 10 seconds to find some kind of transphobic or homophobic trash about how the west will lose because we're all becoming gay or trans apparently. Honestly I pray I never have to see what a fully fascist modern Russia would look like.
At the end of the day I agree that the US has been the more dangerous actor, including for the reasons another person above has mentioned, namely the bloodthirstness of their policies and their unpredictability. It seems that the Russian state is currently far more intelligently run than the US's.
Honestly I would say they have pretensions to imperial status over their immediate historical sphere of influence, but they would not be one on the distinct, full leninist definition as of yet, unless they developed in the longer term within their own sphere of influence in a multipolar order.
Also I think the latter question is loaded or abstract, and is basically implying that you're morally obliged to say no to the question because, I'm guessing, that would be to support the US and delegitimise their right to self defence and not getting bombed? Firstly the masses of Ukraine also have a fucking right not to be bombed and raped and tortured by either side, so that defence argument if you're implying it, would apply here. Secondly whether or not a state is reactionary from a local, regional, or global political or geopolitical perspective is somewhat independent of whether or not the US is.
At the end of the day the argument I most sympathise with I seen is simply stating that it would be better for us in the long run due to geopolitical consequences of multipolarity. But then people are basically saying that the lives of innoncent Ukrainians are a worthwhile price to pay. It's doubly ironic because often the same leftists want to have their cake and eat it from the safety of their bedrooms when it comes to these serious and bloody geopolitical questions, because on the one hand they're claim that you can never justify war or violence against the innocent for consequentialist reasons (say, which would favor the US, also tbh from a consequentialist perspective its almost never true that what the US state wants is best for all involved), while on the other hand being willing to make consequentialist judgements in favor of Russia invading and waging this war. I'm not even saying the latter arguments are illegitimate, but it's interesting to see people who don't see the contradiction there.
Also, more concretely, why would they have that power to defend themselves? Modern states do not have that power without the international relations that that brings with it and which, above a certain level, implies a capacity to exert political authority, power and hegemony beyond your formal borders. A modern capitalist and nationalist state, i.e. a non-socialist state, will structurally tend to that whether we want it or not, as part of being in a broader capitalist global system, if it does not want to stay stuck in a periphery status.
I've been trying to come up with a comment for like twenty minutes so I'll just say thank you for sharing your thoughts, comrade, I think it has helped to keep me grounded. :stalin-point:
The Russian government sucks, my heart hopes the war causes both governments to topple and we see a peaceful revolution in both countries along socialist lines. It's a pipe dream but I gotta keep a little ember of hope to keep doomer thoughts at bay.
I hope Putin and zelensky both get the kind Vladimir Ilyich treatment
the US wants to coup putin and replace him with Navalny, an incredibly Islamophobic reactionary who wants to make Russia even more of a privatized hellhole than it already is
and with regards to Zelensky, he's just a dumbass who tripped over his own dick into inheriting a mess from Poroshenko, who was practically installed by a US-backed coup and massively escalated the situation and (along with Yatsenyuk) made Ukraine's economy somehow even worse than it would have been under Yanukovych, and that's saying something.
yeah Navalny fucking sucks, thats why I don't want to see any "color revolution" bullshit in East Europe
Calling Russia an imperial power is objectively wrong
Not only is it wrong, it's largely irrelevant, which is even worse. Are people under the impression that a hypothetical still-existing RSFSR would do absolutely nothing while a fascist Ukraine continue to shell the civilian population of the Donbass, that they would sit on their collective soviet socialist asses while fascist Ukraine attempt to ethnically cleanse Russians living in Ukraine and mass their troops close to the Russian border while making overtures to join NATO? We have clear precedent of a socialist country invading a fascist country in order to do a great service to humanity by snapping its neck, so the idea of a socialist Russia just doing nothing (because socialist means pacifism apparently) has no merit. And if Russia would invade Ukraine anyways regardless of whether it's socialist or capitalist or "imperialist," then what is the fucking problem?
A socialist soldier of socialist Russia socialistically pulling the socialist trigger of the socialist rifle to have the socialist bullet socialistically enter and exit the skull of the fascist Right Sektor goon is good while a capitalist soldier of capitalist Russia capitalistically pulling the capitalist trigger of the capitalist rifle to have the capitalist bullet capitalistically enter and exit the skull of the fascist Right Sektor goon is bad apparently. All I see is a dead fascist.
while a fascist Ukraine continue to shell the civilian population of the Donbas
This is what I keep coming back to in every argument about this online and IRL. Russia's invasion wasn't the start of the war, it was an escalation of an ongoing conflict - and yes it fucking sucks that the war got escalated in this way, but it's patently false to say that there wasn't an attempt to end it peacefully. Minsk 2 would have reintegrated Donbas with Ukraine with some protections for its minority population, but Ukraine didn't even implement the first step. Zelensky was elected on a platform of ending the war, but when he tried Azov told him they would rather coup his government than stand down. At some point when negotiations are broken down the only thing any organization has left to do is resort to violence, which the Russian state did when it felt threatened enough by NATO (which if you'll recall spent months warmongering prior to the invasion start) to justify the risk.
IDK, I'd say all state powers are imperialist to some degree regardless of what they've done/are currently doing because they're always going to be motivated to act in such a way. Even China, which I will defend as being the best in this hellworld isn't going to be pure of that sin.
That being said they've done amazingly at it overall. Their claim to Taiwan is justified (although whether or not it's practical is a different question) and as a whole aren't exploitative.
The conservative ruling powers of Russia however, are a bit different. They'd be hand in hand with the US in idealogy if it wasn't for them competing in other fields.
maybe lighter on the "imperial", but definitely yes on the " power"? Russia has the 6th highest PPP in the world and has more active duty military than the US
I want Russia to prevail for all of the reasons everyone else is offering. I don't actually support them though. I just post on the internet.
Wanting Russia to win is a calculation people have made based on the effect it would have on the international communist position if Russia were to lose.
A loss in more concrete terms would mean Ukraine achieving their goals, which are the destruction of the Russian state and turning it over to western imperialists.
The outcome of this would be catastrophic for the global communist position as it would result in dozens of nato bases on China's northern border and likely cripple China's plans for toppling US hegemony. China would be isolated and drained until it is defeated.
This calculation results in communists wanting peace asap or a victory. Given that peace is not even on the table many push for victory instead.
This doesn't mean anyone thinks they're actually good or not. It's a pretty simple outcome you come to if you zoom out and look at things from a geo-strategic viewpoint.
What is best for the working class globally - the US getting weakened, potentially to the point of losing its status as hegemon, or one of a handful of powers capable of meaningfully challenging US hegemony being kicked to the curb, vindicating NATO as an organization? And in some kind of far-fetched "Ukraine wins" scenario - how exactly is the working class of Ukraine helped by a neoliberal, anti-union, pro-nazi government being vindicated and hailed as heroes - while backed by militias with US hardware? Kind of academic, since it's not happening, but really curious to understand your logic there.
The whole war is a shitshow, no doubt. War always is. I also have no qualms with your characterization of both sides, but it's missing the important fact that of the two sides, the US/NATO/Ukraine side has been markedly more A) bloodthirsty and B) unpredictable. I don't think it is unreasonable that the side that is actively escalating the conflict seemingly with no understanding of globally important concepts like strategic parity or geopolitical realism in general is the worse of the two. Russia, for how shitty it is as a political entity, is at least consistent, and has actually been- despite what libs will claim again and again - relatively honest about its intentions, what it would and wouldn't accept, etc. Again, the other side is the complete opposite, obfuscating constantly, to the point of denying basic historical facts about what the breaking up of the USSR meant for the region.
Unless your argument is that the US is so volatile that the prospect of losing this conflict is too likely to cause them to just slam the red button and launch nuclear armageddon, then I simply fail to see any argument for supporting the US in this conflict.
I'm a simple man. I see one side fighting against Nazis, I support them.
:not-much-but-honest-work.jpeg:
There is no better side. It is just a better outcome for the balance of powers if the US doesn't put nukes in a nato missile base in ukriane. What is the argument that it would be better if we won?
Yh the whole thing kinda revealed that alot of white bois on the internet would have backed the Romanovs over their western home countries.
Similar on alot of the Iran and Syria takes tbh. Clearly alot of the people here have never met Syrian refugees or Iranian feminist activists.
I think alot of comrades are also equivocating between uses of the term 'empire' to deny that Russian has the negative qualities we associate with the word. On the older definition of an Empire which fits into the ideal of the Roman, Byzantine, Chinese, or Russian Empires, modern Russian does clearly seem to have such ambitions. Which isn't surprising because its a modern neoliberalized but increasingly state-capitalist state run by reactionary nationalists and the founders or descendents of the mafia who took control of the economy and made their money through corruption, sales of public assets, monpoly rents, murder, slavery, drugs and prostitution. It perhaps does not fully fit the later, theoretically distinct (so referring to a different concept) Leninist use of the term where it refers to a particular stage in the later development of modern, mature, globalized capitalism. But this is just restating the fact that Russian does not as yet have the capability of the US to enforce a form of globalized dominance or hegemony over the international capitalist system of production, trade and commerce. But it's not at all clear why these comrades this in any way means that Russia is not the fucked up, depraved place that it is. For what it's worth, I think anyone who thinks that the Russian bourgeoisie would maintain their dominance any less ruthlessly in their sphere of influence than the Americans doesn't know nearly enough about them.
I think at times people have forgotten that their obligation is first and foremost to the well-being of the broad masses of society, including that of Ukraine, and that's been masked by paradox-game style speculations of when Russian 'will humiliate Ukraine', or rejoicing over the deaths of Ukrainians, even The most important thing, including when we take all the political considerations about US power, seems to me to be ending the war as soon as possible in a way that does not give the US its geopolitical objectives. Ofc then we'd have to worry about whether such a set back would make US policy makers more desperate and dangerous in the classic style of declining empires as opposed to feeling more disempowered and accepting that it cannot maintain unipolarity.
Most of the rest of world do not like Russia. They just don't give nearly as much of a fuck about white imperialists crying about a war they caused, and despise and increasingly feel less need to give a fuck about towing the line when the West is pressuring them through moral castigation and threats of material, economic, political and potentially miliary aggression if they don't fall in line. At best some of the more geopolitically aware and savy are conscious of and potentially optimistic for the prosects of a genuinely multipolar order. The Ukraine war is not even the most deadly ongoing conflict. That's the war in Ethiopia.
The interesting theoretical question is raises is whether a multipolar world order in which the major blocs are still all equally committed to deepening late, uber exploitative capitalism and often under very explicitly authoritarian governments, will be more or less prone to geopolitical conflict and war. I fear it's the later, but it also seems to obviously be something that will inevitably have to happen as US global hegemony has to be defeated for socialism as a global project to have even snowman's chance in hell.
Most people in the global south (the working classes of the world in general tbh) are too fucking poor, exhausted, overworked, concerned with more pressing material issues to be able to willing to give a fuck. Yes, many people outside the west are making constant jokes about it, but this is not the same thing as having a developed theoretical opinion that Russia is a positive influence in the world or should win.
At no point did I imply that they cannot or do not. That's not at all the point. Their political opinions matter more immediately that americans lemme tell ya. But if you haven't had the opportunity to be educated on the topic because you're too poor and overworked, if you are too exhausted to keep up to date on info on a distant geopolitical conflict, then alot of people are simply not going to have the point of view that westerners on this website do developing their geopolitical theories from the leisure of their bedrooms, in particular the majority they don't sit around talking in technical leninst terms about imperialism and multipolarity. That has nothing to do with their capacities, but with other material conditions that restrain that or make it not a priority. If anything friends and fam around me have been joking about how little they give a fuck.
But again, as in my previous comment, at no point do I suggest that "working class people do not have the capacity to form their own theoretical and political opinions to emancipate themselves". They obviously do. But material conditions and their effects on our education on certain issues, or our time and energy to dedicate to it, don't magically disappear for most people because ideally we would like them to, and pointing out that fact is not negating people's capacities, it's pointing out that capitalism and imperialism rob us of our opportunities to actualise this potential. Like my mum is sharp as a whip. But she doesnt know shit about geopolitics because she doesnt have the time or energy, and her situation is common.
The only reason I am relatively well-informed on the geopolitical history of Russia and Ukraine is because I was lucky enough to do well in public education and get funding to support it further instead of working full-time.
On the point regarding Chinese academics, you're obviously correct, but the simple fact that there are Chinese scholars who support Russia's invasion is not much of an argument outside of what their actual arguments are. Some have better analyses imo, others worse. It also depends on whether or not their analyses are from a socialist or nationalist perspective.
Westerners obviously masters are lecturing the rest of the world on every topic under the sun. We all hopefully know this. But westerners are doing this all the time on this site and people only get in uproar when they dont agree with the take. At the end of the day what matters is whether or not that view is correct. Like I dont give a fuck whether a country's majority are anti-LGBT or think black people have souls, I'm still gonna say it's fucking wack, and honestly anything else is cowardice.
Brave of u assume i must be from the west.
Well for the record I'm not, but I've lived in Europe for a long while and guess I learned to speak similar to them when in English.
That didn't stop the poor, exhausted, overworked, concerned with more pressing material issues workers of Haiti, the Central African Republic, Mali, and Ethiopia from waving Russian flags. The Global South doesn't need to have big-brained analysis of pampered Westerners to decide that yes, Russia is the lesser evil to the point of not being all that evil. They are tired of the West's bullshit and want the West to gtfo by any means necessary. That's why Mali told the Danish and the French to gtfo while inviting the Russians in. Even the most uneducated members of those countries recognize this simple truth. If anything, it's the petty bourgeois NGO-brained members of their society who's mentally colonized and think the West can show them neocolonial mercy.
You're obviously 100% correct if everything you've said regarding revolution. People make their revolutions, not the ruling classes or the middle classes, petit-boug, or bougies who claim to represent them. If I didn't think that to my bones I wouldn't be a communist. I'm not disagreeing. But on the point of explicit support you're actually mainly referring to the states of those countries. The average urban or rural worker is not following the geopolitical minutiae of this conflict closely. Ofc, there are far more comrades outside the West than inside of it, and their opinions and analyses are in general more concrete and interesting of those western comrades. But we are still a political minority outside the West and have a range of reactionary domestic forces to compete with.
Yes people outside the west are generally far more more aware of the fact that the West and recently especially the US has been structurally ruining their lives for centuries and are contemptuous of Western liberal obliviousness this. That's why they don't give a fuck if the US/Ukraine loses, and I get and have the same immediate emotional reaction to people talking about it. But that's different to a colder, consequentialist geopolitical analysis where I think it the positive consequences for the global working class would outweigh the negative in the long run. Most people in the world are not radicalized and therefore not theoretically developed to the point of taking that view. The rest of the world still struggles with reactionary ideology, much as a direct resort of the imperialism and exploitation they have suffered at the West's hands.
Again, I don't even disagree that if I were forced to answer the question, I'd probably say with a decent amount of confidence that I think the overall consequences would be better if Russian got the edge rather than the West. What makes me uncomfortable is that how that seems to easily to slide into a kind of nihilistic gloating and tbh explicitly positive championing of Russian interests, whereas the fact that we want US hegemony to collapse does not imply that I have to want Russian nationalist imperialist interests to spread across Eastern Europe on the historical pattern which anyone who actually follows and studies the politics of the region is fully aware that Russia would like to do given its geopolitical status. Like do people here actually think that the Wagner company in Africa are doing good, humanitarian work? Evidently they've never met mercenaries.
think it's an even further truncated version of "yeh", so probably meant to be read as "yeah"
Yh the whole thing kinda revealed that alot of white bois on the internet would have backed the Romanovs over their western home countries.
TFW you don't understand revolutionary defeatism.
except many people slobbering at the mouth for a crushing russian victory clearly don't understand it either lmao. Not as if they've been crawling out of the woodwork much to say that, from the pov of the russian working class, they would hope that the Russian working class also overthrows the Russian government. I also want Nato to lose, for obvious reasons. But it often looks on here like people saying they hope the Germans get defeated by the Romanovs but dont want the Romanov dynasty to fall because it would inevitably lead to a foreign intervention and imperialist domination of Russia, when the clear thing to want is that is fundamentally destabilizes both governments. But again, that's not what alot of people on here have been suggesting wrt russia (hey maybe because its mainly alienated people shitposting). Tbf, the best arguments I can think of in defence of that is the absence of sufficient leftist presence in Russia (due to that not being allowed by the gov). But it does raise the obvious question of when we should support anti-government movements in other countries. Like many people here seem to perceive every movement in countries opposed by Nato as astroturfed CIA-plants. The later obviously exist as a matter of public record at large, politically important scales (Ukraine's fascist coup d'était being the obvious example), but the latter normally need to latch on to and redirect organic social movements. Honestly I think alot of people just want to make the real world politics of this seem alot simplier and easier than it is from the comfort of their computer screens, abstracting from the messy detail by doing some geopolitical analysis.
Again, just to change the reference a bit to Iran and Syria, its really, really evident from how they talk about these issues that a bunch of people here have not really interacted with many people from these places, let alone been to them. Like would people here be making their Assad jokes to comrades who've come out of a Syrian prison, or iranian feminist activists who've been raped in prison? It's obviously correct to not want Nato to intervene imperialistically in these countries affairs, and people in the west have a political responsibility to organize to prevent that, but many people on here who make the pro-russian/syrian/iranian comments are not even doing that. They're playing video games and watching anime. Its important to be conscious of the fact that you're then talking about yet more governments that use mass repression, killings, torture and rape prisons against masses of communist, socialist, anarchist, feminist and indigeneous activists and militants, and use the political power they have to crush genuinely progressive movements as well. They'd murder you in a heartbeat if necessary or convenient. The other side of the revolutionary defeatist equation is normally not being consistently brought up here either, nor the related question on what conditions make revolutionary situations possible in these countries, and so when and how to support them if possible in any way.
The irony is that many people are would then point out that the Russian Communist Party has a decently sized base in Russia, not realising how reactionary the current org bearing that name it (to not get into the details of the other groups), and how they are fully integrated into the current ruling regime in Russia, seen as a asset by Putin's faction to bolsher United Russia.
Russia is the better side in the war with Ukraine
the war is between Russia and NATO, not Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia are both hollowed out shells of their former soviet selves thanks to the 1990s. They are being made to slaughter each other so America can sell Liquid Natural Gas to Europeans.
People really do be defending a country trying to annex another country's territory as if Lenin didn't say that was bad a hundred years ago.
The general misanthropy and eagerness for violence. I know it's a lot of people just being frustrated and venting, but I still think it's unhealthy to fantasize about perpetrating violence against people and being cruel as a form of gratification for its own sake. A revolution is a not a picnic and the refusal of the cruel masters of this world to accept anything but their continued domination by way of blood will require violence to overturn, yes, but this is a fact I face with deep regret and sorrow. I try to cultivate forgiveness and love for everyone. I don't believe that there are people who are fundamentally wicked; the capacity for cruelty and oppression is in all of us. This is why it's important to guard ourselves against the temptation to delight in violence in itself.
I don't exactly blame people for feeling this way, but I hope they don't lose themselves in it, don't forget that we're struggling for universal human dignity and compassion.
i hold those same principles, and building on that, I think it often reeks of compensation. like, a movement with actual military capacity isn't constantly making absurd, empty threats.
of course like every 5th post i make is calling for my enemies to burn eternally in the lake of fire, so i'm fully projecting here.
I think it's very important to be as kind as possible, to make the choice to be better when one can, and reject cruelty.
We want to built a world that eliminates unecessairy suffering, so we should never stoop to perpetuating it ourselves. Someone on here once wrote an essay about "Communism of Love" of which I have forgotten most of the content, and I can't read it anymore, but the sentiment is still important to me. I am a socialist because I love people, all of them.
With the ones, that are inarguably causing unimaginable suffering, we shouldn't just feel hatred(or maybe at all), but sadness for the lost humanity and lost potential.
We want to create a world without monsters, not become them.
I’m very guilty of this, but I will say that to some extent it allows me to cultivate forgiveness and love for everyone in real life, which I consider a core part of who I am as a person. In reality I try to see the best in everyone and give the benefit of the doubt. If someone cuts me off in traffic I assume they’re about to shit their pants.
I reserve my anger for the the worst of the worst and vent it on this website. Which is still maybe not healthy
Overgeneralisations. People will complain that "hexbear thinks" or something, and you dig a little and find out it was one particularly vocal person.
I think a lot of americans on here are way too dismissive of, like say, britain and france, considering their working class is way more powerful and organized relative to their states. Seems like cope sometimes
I remember being in my mid teens and while in a 'heated' argument about what record by ehstever band was better with a record store employee who was in his 30s but had similar taste and we to this day send new bands to each other and while we're both acting super passionate over like...whether the best Discharge album was Why or Hear Nothing he stopped and asked "you're having fun doing this right? Just gotta make sure." I said "oh absolutely" and he said "good, just making sure, I really enjoy arguing about music with people that like music cause it's a good discussion and a fun way to banter about it" and I feel that's usually how to go about things. I try to avoid anime stuff cause I like 5 animes. Sometimes I'll post that list as The Only Good Ones. But for shit I enjoy or find interesting it can be fun to get into the weeds and pretend you care more than you really do.
There's a tendency online to assume every post someone makes is made like they would die to defend it. Whereas everyone posting assumes they won't be taken more seriously than they mean to be. I'm really sarcastic and tend to say absolutely obvious bullshit as a joke irl and deliver it deadpan as fuck, which can sometimes lead to at work if someone's in the can and someone else asks where they're at and I say 'up on the roof peeling oranges' it takes a couple seconds for the tone and word dissonance to hit. Generally it's pretty quickly figured out that I might be doing a bit and that's worth considering when I speak but even being very dry IRL, it hits home although sometimes a bit later than delivery. It's really hard to get that kind of laugh from a mass broadcast in text. I try my best by wording things to indicate such but reading comprehension of your audience isn't guaranteed either. It can be a bummer.
my guess is that happens cause its safer in a way that risking a nasty debate about a more serious topic.
Most media only reinforce the status quo. Most won't cause people to commit genocide or go on mass shootings or rub themselves looking at a picture of Jeffery Dahmer, but they'll just normalize or rationalize what's already been accepted in culture
I think consumer brain is definitely real, and many people when they turn their brain off to enjoy something it just so happens they can't turn it back on again.
To be a leftist in the 21st century unfortunately means to be constantly aware of political motivation behind consuming culture. One thing you can say that traditional socialist theory doesn't capture very easily is that modern capitalism commodified culture in a way that consuming it feels almost explicitly the same as embracing said culture.
Yeah you can enjoy something like Top Gun Maverick for what it is, but if you are not aware of all the political and cultural aspects, heck even its own existence and how its made and where it sits on the timeline of Pentagon approved propaganda then, well there is no hope for you and you are not a leftist yet.
But if you are aware of all these things, then sure watch it, consume it, move on. It would be best if you pirate it instead but in the end it doesn't really matter at all.
Or the obsession with movies geared towards kids needing to be award winning masterpieces.
I get what you mean, but you know what else is funny right? The Orcars continue to snub every piece of animation that isn't some garbage ass Pixar copy paste. The "best animation" award is perpetually locked into being a "best Dysney movie of the year" award and that isn't changing anytime soon.
Literaly the only anime movie people know about is either Pokemon or Miyazaki. Nobody in the west will ever consider giving an award to something that literally isn't something childish Disney 3D copy paste.
"Your Name" became the biggest mainstream hit of the decade and not even a nomination.
The fact Don Hertzfeldt hasn't ever won even when nominated is a crime.
The Oscar animation category is also just hell.
The fact Don Hertzfeldt hasn’t ever won even when nominated is a crime.
Preach it, comrade. Don Hertzfeldt is one of the most talented living film makers, hands down. The fact that no part of It's Such a Beautiful Day won (and only the first was even nominated) is evidence that the whole contest is bullshit.
Ayup. Also world of tomorrow part 1 was nominated, also didn't win.
Meaning of life is one of the most sublime short films ever.
I like to show "Meaning of Life" in my intro to philosophy class. There's always one student who says something like "that didn't make any sense! It was just weird and pointless" and it's perfect.
“Your name” is actually good. I’d even recommend it to people who don’t like anime, it’s just a genuinely touching story.
Yeah Your Name is just a really good movie if you like movies that will make you cry
honestly im okay with that cause i dont want the rest of the world's animation to be more sucked into the vortex of catering to americans' opinions on what is or isnt good animation
on the one hand i agree with this
on the other hand im very aware of how reactionary the sports I like are or can be (boxing is a big confession there holy shit but yh gets me hooked)
Also people inironically or even uncritically defending Lysenko like goddamn what a weird flex but ok
Lysenko is interesting as a demonstration of how ideology - even a good ideology like communism - colors the way a society practices science and interprets scientific findings. This can be bad, as in Lysenkoism, but it can also be good, like how the USSR rightfully decried eugenics as a fascist bourgeois practice and banned it in the 30s, as opposed to the liberal capitalists, whose Malthusianism to this day leads them to
CW: racism
forcibly sterilize people for failing the paper bag test
Normally when people defend Lysenko, they at best cite his work on vernalization, and therefore his early recognition of the scientific validity of epigenetics, but in all honestly his actual theoretical work and the consequences of his views, actions and program has very little strong bearing for the modern science of epigenetics. Despite the fact that at the end of the day he played a direct, personal, important role in holding back the development of the biological sciences in the USSR, for deeply anti-scientific (therefore, by definition and nature, anti-marxist) reasons. He also played a role in having the best biologists of the USSR put to death, while he himself had no deep theoretical knowledge and didn't contribute any.
Okay sure. Fair and true enough.
What is interesting though is that's a great historical exemplar of something I frankly think we are communists and leftists do often, of confusing progressive aspects of our thought (in this case, rejection of eugenics) and a 'vulgar', and ultimately regressive aspect (in this case, rejection of genetics on the classic mistaken idea that empirically supported science must be incorrect if we can vaguely interpret or connote it as regressive).In this case of the USSR, it also reflects a deep institutional malfunction at the level of the relationship between the state-party parallel structure and institutions such as those of scientific research and development.
The whole history of biology is fascinating actually in terms of political biography because so many of its most imporant pioneers were either fuckinf rad commie materialists or rather social darwinist eugenicists.
Eugenics is an ideology to its core as it is a moral stance on what is humanity and which humans have rights. The proven nature of the genetics of down syndrome for example makes no statement on whether people with the condition have a right to exist and procreate it is ideology that puts the eugenicist on their evil interpretation of this fact
some people really out here cosplaying ruthless revolutionary georgian daddies from the 30s on the internet lmao
Can't defend Berryah or Lishrinko if I don't know who those people are :that-one-emoji-with-the-black-man-tapping-his-temple:
When has that ever happened on Hexbear? Lol. Maybe that brief period of time when Haz had an account here? His group are the only Lysenko stans I see anywhere.
Tbh I recall one or two posts in particular where there were several people going a bit hard in the paint to rehabilitate the dude
I have a feeling this was quite a while back when the mecha-tankies or magacommunists or whatever the fuck they're calling themselves now had an interest in us. Haz and his cronies all got permabanned here.
I want to seeeeeeeeeeee. Should still be around we only archive after 1 month.
Yh obviously correct and I mean while we're at it people actually implying that it's good that so many of the Old Bolsheviks who made the revolution were executed genuinely chills me in how perverse it is.
There's like a good amount of resentment and hostility here to the idea that it's good to outside, join orgs, have a rich and healthy social life, exercise or basically do anything that isn't staying at home doomscrolling, playing video game or watching anime. Not everyone or even most, but like quite a large amount more than anywhere I've ever been.
i can't speak for everyone here, but I've had mostly negative experiences with orgs over the past 10 years or so. They tend to devolve into personal drama before anything meaningful gets down outside of a few weekends of volunteer work. Some genuine good moments of helping one or two people out every few months, then it's back to just glorified book club meetings. This could be a problem of living in a very depressing conservative area though. Food not Bombs was the org I was in that did the most work, but it always felt like a hamster wheel. Constantly running against the wind and never getting anywhere. I got tired and burnt out and that's probably my fault, so I haven't done org stuff in a while.
This forum tho is probably the most well-adjusted forum I've ever been on, with a lot of people who have academic pursuits or have traveled the world, or otherwise had a lot of cool life experiences. It's interesting that you see it from the opposite angle, that we're more poorly adjusted than anywhere you've been (i mean that in a genuinely interesting way)
yh sorry to hear that you've had those experiences.
For what its worth tho even in places where orgs are more in place and developed and have alot of genuine comrades in them, whether commies or no, I think you'd very likely still have to go through alot of different orgs before u got to one that u found both ideologically and practically good, and (importantly) where the actual people in it and their interpersonal dynamics were relatively good and healthy (difficult in politics). You'd then have to deal with the near constant beefs between different groups, factions, and sects, all accusing one another of sectarianism. It's still exhausting everywhere else, and imagine doing it outside the west and with more explictly non-liberal govs.
You'd also have the issue (in the west), which maybe you can guess from places like this site, that it often becomes pretty weird, mostly white dudes, in a cultish kinda of scenario. Trots are often guilty of this, but unlike the impression you might get from this site theyre deff not the only ones. Met leninists, maoists and anarchists who are just as guilty. there's often still a pretty 'in-group' dynamic to alot of them, and mistrust of outsiders apart from relating to you in a weird way like a potential convert to the cause, which can be alienating and isn't very effective politically.
Also, when comparing hard left commie orgs in the west with those outside of it, those in the west (moreso in Europe), unless they've tried to legitimize themselves by electorialism, soc-demism, eurocommunism etc, sometimes try to give the impression that they're organizing like military bolsheviks during the civil war, which is weird because not only is that not really how they were organizing during that time, but also because when they were most successful before then that's not really how they organized, and because their increasingly military form during the civil war as a necessary but unpleasant organization decision given the challenges.
yeah you hit the nail on the head, lots of weird white college guys and odd cultish environments. We'd regularly hand out newspapers too, and usually people were interested only if they were really strange too. Like one time I remember we were doing community outreach and had pamphlets about how poorly operated the medical system in the US is, and the only people who talked to us were anti-vax, crystals, and reiki healing types.
Definitely true too that orgs I've been with saw themselves as a military apparatus of some kind, despite everyone being untrained and not exactly the most disciplined.
I recognize the problem though, the problem is that leftist organization over the past 60 years has been so thoroughly discouraged that it's just glorified book clubs now outside of small pockets. It's a subculture more than a movement. It's an ambient feeling without any outlet. That stereotype of American communists being white college students from the suburbs is not totally inaccurate, since most American leftists seem to be arriving at the theory through academics, encountering student organizations, having a a greater than average interest in history, that kind of thing.
Organising irl is the only thing that keeps me sane tbh (although it is exhausting sometimes)
IDK it's normal to disagree about a person's point of view that doesn't mean I start drawing conclusions about their life that's what desperate weirdos do
makes it easier to avoid the responsibility of having to go outside and actually talk to people - especially those shock and horror dirty trots.
tbh u also see a bunch of people who do do the militancy game go zealously into the deep end like where they sacrifice all those other healthy parts of life for the sake of it. Not unique to commies obvs, but leads to classic burnout
There’s like a good amount of resentment and hostility here to the idea that it’s good to outside, join orgs, have a rich and healthy social life, exercise or basically do anything that isn’t staying at home doomscrolling, playing video game or watching anime.
I'm resentful of it because I don't believe it's advice which is applicable to my life situation, tbh. I do engage in physical exercise pretty often, because that is something that I can do, but I don't see any of the others as viable options.
What one can or cannot do is very specific to an individual, but surely you can agree that these are generally good things to aspire to if it is possible right?
Well if I can't do what one should aspire to do, then it's pretty likely I'm going to get resentful of that regardless, isn't it?
Why would you resent not something one should aspire to do because you can't do it? If you can't do it you can't do it.
Because it's a point of inequality between me & others, and because it'll be held against me regardless of what I think.
And further it's a limitation of the depth of life experiences that I have available to me, that isn't there for others.
A lot of people get hostile when advice doesn't apply to them and feel like they're being personally attacked.
The idea that spreading guns everywhere is a good idea and helps the revolution. If you're starting a leftist army, sure please arm them that's an unfortunate necessity, otherwise literal death machines only really do one thing: make more people die (and very likely is that the very owner of the death machine or their family is the one who will die).
Secondly, most of urbanism are obsessed with packing everyone in massive concrete superstructures, and laud places like London and Paris which are overcrowded hellholes as somewhat well-used space. I've been to both cities many times and have friends there, they're very cool cities, but living in either is not a physically nor mentally healthy lifestyle for 90+% of people.
Come at me nerds.
I’m very excited about China’s efforts to modernize rural living. My sensory issues are intense. I love visiting the city and all the amenities that affords. Public transport, the ability to walk places, everything staying open longer, more niche hobby activities being more accessible. But visiting for a week throws me off for the rest of the month. Even in “quiet” cities, the sensory overload is a lot.
To be fair, aye, I think I understand see the point you're making. Maybe it's just more of a US thing, because very few people (including cops) have guns here in Euroland.
Still, if this is the main reason, I get why you'd want guns in that environment, but parallel to that surely should be the desire to tighten gun control laws to a similar point - restrict guns down so neither rightwingers nor police have so many in the first place. As successfully works elsewhere.
Also from what I've heard, being armed is actually more dangerous than being unarmed a lot of the time. If someone threatens you with a knife or a gun while you're unarmed, you might get mugged or beaten up. If both of you have a gun, it's a lot more likely that someone's gonna panic and one of you is not making it out alive. The mere act of having a weapon already serves to escalate the situation.
Now of course, in the specific scenario where the attacker is looking to hate crime you from the get-go, having a gun is obviously preferable, but generally speaking a gun does not make you safer in the streets.
It may be impossible to prove without some ethically questionable experiments, but the evidence is still pretty strong that merely owning a gun greatly increases your chance of being killed.
I've never really understood the self-defence argument for every day living, if someone comes at you with a gun and intends to shoot you, I suspect they'd shoot you, whether or not you have a gun. The chance of you being aware of that threat beforehand, having the time and opportunity to get your own weapon, ready it for use, and then effectively use it to ward off that threat are gonna be really low, and basically all the time will be worse odds than just running away. Add to that the pretty high chance of being shot with your own gun in the first place, and I very much question that it improves your odds of surviving any given year.
We will quite literally need weapons to win. We will not win if the left is not armed. Power is born out of the barrel of a gun. No ruling class has ever surrendered its power without being forced, let alone altruistically.
Ofc this is not exactly what you've said, as you've mentioned 'arming everyone'. But if the solution is not winning control over militaries where the weapons are contained through elections, which is likely because electorialism is utter bullshit in the long run, then the only solutions are forming people's armies and/or radicalizing the armed forces to form part of them. I don't think it's at all clear how in those conditions of social breakdown we'd be able to keep any kind of lid on the proliferation of guns, especially in the US. Ofc the issue there is also that most of the people with guns are not on our side.
The solution to high populations definitely does include high-rises I feel, and that's for economic reasons and precisely to avoid overcrowding, even through its obviously extremely imperfect as it currently is. The other solution is to have low density housing more spread, and have services and infastructure spread out to faciliate that. But that's massive program and I'm not clear on how well it could be done.
Also, very importantly, a big reason those cities, like others, have housing issues is not because they don't have enough actual housing. It's because so much of that housing is either lived in by the bourgeoisie as one of their many homes, and/or is owned as purely speculative financial asset instead of being used for living, or is used for the offices of some useless, bullshit modern enterprise. I don't know how much you've seen of the interiors of people of different classes in London or Paris, but it would be similar to other dense cities where the bourgeois take up immensely more space per person, and they're often not even there.
I'm a city rat tho so even tho I'm fully aware of how alienating and bad a modern metropolis if for your health I still immensely value having access to so much in a relatively small space.
I mean, you've explicitly mentioned people's armies or radicalised armed forces, and as I said, I totally get that firearms are a necessary part of that, that's fine.
I take the points on cities, but I see no reason to think successful spread out rural services and infrastructure aren't achievable, they're already fairly successful in many parts of the world. I do also take your point that some people enjoy living in the cities despite the downsides, that's fine too. I think we can probably agree both rural and urban life have room for major improvement if they could be without the bourgeois nonsense dragging it down.
I’m so mixed on guns, but I think I’ve come to a solid belief.
In an ideal world, I want no one to own guns. Police shouldn’t have them, individuals shouldn’t have them, and militaries should be as small as possible.
However, I live in the United States in 2023. And in the United States in 2023, the people who want me and my loved ones dead have lots and lots of guns. So I would like the people on my side to also have guns.
But also I absolutely cannot own one myself, first off I have a medical weed card which disqualifies me, but also I’m far more likely to use it on myself than anyone else.
Explaining my stance on guns is exhausting. But to put it simply, I just do the nasal exhale whenever someone suggests that "we need guns for protection" and a dozen kids die the next month, and no one ends up safer, and the cycle continues.
with you on guns but I think writing off London & Paris as 'hell holes' is absolutely a shitty chud take sorry.
That wasn't even the early days that was like a year in :it-was-me:
Westoid brains + consumerist brains means people get offended when their benign choices are criticized or joked about because what little identity and freedom they have is now under threat. The 'take' economy really is like podcasting. Low bar of entry and a lot of people think they have something valuable to say
But my comment is an actual attack on westerners as a group of people, so feel free to get offended over that
It's basically the console wars except some of the parties are sentient.
I am of course referring to the cats and dogs.
Everyone’s take on China is that of a terminally online 16 year old dengist
:dead-dove-3:
terminally online 16 year old dengist
The average terminally online 16 year old is a massive sinophobe. Where are all these 16 year old "Dengists?" Deng was Marxist. I am 31 years old.
seriously tho. millions of reddit kids going "xi banned winnie the pooh uyghur genocide tiannanmen square scary china man spy on me with tik tok"
where are these "dengists" in the west? I think "Dengist" is just a lazy pejorative used by anyone who doesn't buy into the Western social democrat consensus that China is just America with red paint.
Yes this was also shown is a really dismissive response to a soc dem who posted a few weeks ago seemingly to genuinely want to understand why some people have more positive views on certain aspects of modern China. Pretty embarassing.
There were some good interactions there, it just got flooded with a lot of... well meaning... posts
